Lost military medals returned to original owner

View full sizeFILE - Josh Harley purchased the five honors medals â all encased in a shadow box â for $50 at an auction in November, with the thought of finding the owner.

MOBILE, Alabama — For Josh Harley, his mission to find the owner of the military medals he purchased at auction was accomplished.

Harley purchased the five honors medals — all encased in a shadow box — for $50 at an auction in November, with the thought of finding the owner. One of the medals, a Purple Heart, had the name Tyson Johnson III inscribed on it.

As chronicled in a Mobile Press story that ran Dec. 25, Harley read about Johnson on a website dedicated to Purple Heart recipients, learning that the veteran had been injured in a mortar attack in Iraq in 2003 and faced difficulties when he returned home to Mobile in 2004.

Prichard City Councilwoman Earline Martin-Harris — acting on Johnson’s behalf — contacted Harley. Martin-Harris picked up the medals from Harley. In turn she gave Harley a proclamation from the city of Prichard that was planned to have been presented to him during a news conference.

Martin-Harris said that unfortunate circumstances led to the loss of the medals. She delivered them to Johnson on Thursday afternoon.

Johnson was not available for comment.

Harley said Thursday that finding the owner “was the right thing to do.”

“I was definitely shocked, I was glad and very enthusiastic that I had so many different people who were helpful in returning the medals. I’m thankful that I was able to get them back to whom they belonged,” Harley said.

“I will probably never meet him, but that wasn’t the point of it. That’s the way things should be done for people that served this country. We take for granted sometimes how much they do for us.”